On 27 February 1943, just over 100 people – mainly women – gathered on a street in Berlin. In the early hours of the morning, the Gestapo had pulled Jewish men out out of their beds while they were sleeping next to their ‘Aryan’ wives. Around 2,000 of them were rounded up and held at a Jewish community centre on Rosenstraße, and the women were angry. They began to gather outside and they were there day after day, chanting, “Give us our husbands back.” In March, the crowd had grown to thousands.
One day, the guards had had enough. They pointed machine guns at the crowd and told the women to disperse, but it only bolstered their resistance. They began shouting, “Murderers! Murderers!” Finally, Joseph Goebbels conceded and began releasing…
